“My friend,” said Dale, fixing on him eyes of calm disapproval, “if you are the cause of my being forced to a cold-water plunge bath against my wishes, I will sentence you to the gallows. Now go!”
He went. He was hurt, but he was not deterred. He would wait for the lady. A gentleman could do no less. Louise stopped. Gordon stopped. The whole back line stopped. Each man stood to his colors and—his plank. Louise, glancing appealingly over her shoulder, gave an hysterical little laugh.
“Move on!” cried Gordon, impatiently.
Instead of moving on, however, Lawson came confidently toward Louise. She stifled a little feminine scream in her handkerchief and stepped hastily backward.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Lawson.
Gordon repressed a rising oath, and cried out, “If you dare—,” but Lawson had already dared. His heavy step was upon Louise’s frail support. She thought shudderingly, intuitively, of the dark, swift, angry current under its thin veneer of ice—the current that was always hungry and ate islands and fertile fields in ravenous mouthfuls. She ran back to the end of her plank.
“Have no fear,” said the drunken man, blandly. He stepped to the bare ice at her side. “A man can’t walk pigeon-toed always,” he confided. “Besides, there’s not a particle of danger. These fools are making a mountain of a mole-hill.”
Gordon came forward quickly.
“Run ahead, Miss Dale, I’ll tend to this fellow,” he said.
He extended a firm hand. He meant to clutch the man, shove him behind, and keep him there. But at that moment the ice began to give under Lawson’s clumsy feet. A look of blank, piteous helplessness came into his drunken eyes as he felt the treacherous ice sinking beneath him. He tottered, then, with frantic, unthinking haste, and sprang to the plank, but it, too, began to sink. He laid desperate hold of the girl.